I am trying really hard to be completely biased
against Crozier, as at this point it is probably obvious I am a huge Harjo
mark, but describing a deer with “his chest white with moon-spill” is pretty
fuckin’ sick line. Right after that poetic jab she gives the power punch of
“They touch the high things humans don’t sense are there.” I am woozy.

Harjo’s poem is as good as I’d expect, tying us
all together with our heartache. One man’s stanza is specifically striking:

This man speaks to no one, but his body does.

Half his liver is swollen with anger; the other
half is trying

To apologize —

What a mess I’ve made of history, he thinks
without thinking.

I love the Harjo poem immensely, but there is
something to be said for how quick the Crozier one strikes. I have a well-known
love for form poetries (accursed with a brain synchronized too tightly with
math), but this makes me wonder if perhaps the ever-popular free verse is not
comparable to mixed martial arts, and going the distance is not as striking (no
pun intended) when appearing right beside a quick KO.

THE KVLT SCHOLAR’S PREAMBLE: Before I render my
final hantei 判定 of this year's Royal Poetry Rumble I would like to
first thank the poet and scholar Raven Mack for asking once again that I render
my idiot decision(s) upon all of this art which was no doubt created expressly
for the purpose of some goon (me) making pronouncements about it that range
from the banal all the way up to the facile. Thanks too to all the poets! I am
sorry for what I have done to your work and continue to do to it! But at the
same time, I am reading it, which is more than most, so you get it where you
can, I guess. This leads me to again thank Raven because it is possible and
indeed definite that I spend too much time in the poesy of ġēaradagas
(yore-days) and not enough in the present and so this now-annual opportunity to
read from among the most celebrated contemporary poets has been, one more,
illuminating. That said IT IS TIME TO RUMBLE IT IS TIME TO ROOOOOOYAL POETRY
RUMBLE YYYYEEEAAAAHHHHH

THE KVLT SCHOLAR’S HANTEI: Holy fvkkn shit
"Barren" is maybe the best one yet what the hekkkkkkkk just happened
to the place in my heart where deer are. "In the orchard a deer stands on
his hind legs" is a an all-time great first line of poesy in my view and
when whoever-this-is' collected works comes out at the end of her (if this is
not a ladypoet I will eat my hat) long life it will hold I am sure a place of
privilege amongst the other lines listed in the index of first lines (all
volumes of poetry longer than a chapbook should have this). Please do not think
I am in anyway trivializing any of this, I don't know, Elizabeth
Bishop/Marianne Moore-level animal poem (I know no greater praise) when I tell
you that the lines "his chest white with moon-spill, his antlers tall hard
hands, fingers splayed" call to mind together in their totality two of my
favourite instances of recent deer-art, one the "Lunar Stag" of Eric
Sabee (kvlt fantasy art), the other the "Laurence Elk" of Welcome
skateboards (kvlt sk8tbört art), the first of which extends the stag's antlers
until they are themselves lunar in proportion and aspect; the second offering
literal antler-hands (["If you fall, I will catch, I'll be waiting,"
the time{aftertime}less words of Cyndi Lauper rendered haunting and new below];
my wife bought me this skateboard for my birthday years ago). I saw a deer near
a stream by the hill as I drove through Marshy Hope on my way to the best judo
tournament I ever won; I saw a deer and her young walking with my daughter in
Hemlock Ravine, they crossed the path just ahead of us. Deer are important both
symbolically and actually and this poem offers us both without either
collapsing into the other and this is an achievement. No ideas but in things,
no deer-ideas but in deer-things, this has both, what more could we ask of it.
As to its rival here: I have long felt weird about how a blues is a form a lot
of poets just take as a given, as a form for them to have a go at, and when I
say this I am in no way making a point about cultural appropriation (Maya
Angelou was right that all poetry is a human heritage and to deny anyone any of
it is to deny their humanity) but about the oddness that that popular form is
the one that poets seem to want to just work into the mix, and I was about to
make a (dumb) point about how it's not like poets do that with other genres
like for example there is no poem here called Treesorrow: A Black Metal but it
occurs to me there is literally no reason not to write that poem and I guess I
will now? I don't like this poem very much (in the fullness of time it might
well remain Superior to Treesorrow; who can say) but to the extent to which it
is has compelled me to reevaluate or at least examine how I have always thought
this was an odd kind of poem to write I salute it; also any poet who makes it
this far in the Royal Poetry Rumble is entitled to no small measure of respect.
Remember the Royal Rumble a few years ago that was kind of awful until almost
the end but then Ryback of all people (who most would describe I think as
himself *quite* awful) came out at like number twenty-six or something and then
all of a sudden the match was inexplicably awesome? Now that I write that out
it doesn't seem directly relevant.

WINNER: "BARREN"

Yeah, I can’t disagree with any of that. The
nature of this Royal Poetry Rumble is that one only need survive both the luck
of the draw as well as the match-ups they are drawn into, and Crozier did so to
make this final, against our established Poetry Superstar in Joy Harjo. And
Crozier earned her victory in that last battle, which was the one that counted
more than all.

And thus, eliminated most honourably at #2 is Joy
Harjo, and your victor of the 2017 Royal Poetry Rumble is Lorna Crozier, in
what has to be considered an upset, as Canadians weren’t even entered in last
year’s contest. Perhaps we go international next year. Perhaps we never do this
again. There are many perhaps in our lives and our cultures, but poesy is not
one of them. So regardless, any fucker who is still reading this far along, I
hope you love on some poetry and read it and cultivate it and MAKE THAT SHIT
FUCKING HAPPEN.

starting points

What It Do

Low art formed in low places by a real dude. Bread words on the bedazzling bedeviled internet machines. For flesh and blood contact, or exchanges of treasure or tribute): RAVEN MACK PO BOX 585 CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA 22902. For 1s and 0s robot contact (or exchanges of virus and vinegraic piss): ravenmack at gmail dot com. Paypal support can be thrown at that email address too if you got it like that.

Might I suggest the best way to enjoy my madness is to scroll to the bottom and get lost in the tag labyrinth.